The War Of The Word

atari_kid writes "For who didn't know Microsoft has a internal blogging service, which is becoming popular with their employees. And even some of their high level managers have their own blog like Chris Pratley, a group program manager (GPM) for Word2002 (OfficeXP) project. Mr. Pratley just blogged on his 'personal philosophical' conversion from a Mac geek to a Microsoft devotee & his interesting perspective on the 'Word Processor' wars of the mid-90's and why Microsoft won."

Comments

The Old New Thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The best Microsoft employee blog is the Old New Thing. I don't think you'd get far arguing your anti-Microsoft points with Raymond.

WP 5.1 - those were the days

[Nom du Keyboard]

Although I use MSWord because that's what the world uses, and am a power user who is both a writer and a more than competent VBA programmer. I know where I speak from, however...

I still keep Word Perfect 5.1 on my 386-SX based Toshiba notebook. Notebook and word processor run just fine, and to this day would meet 99% of my needs if I didn't have to exchange documents with others (meaning they send me MSWord files).

I remember when WP succeeded because they supported a wide variety of hardware, and most every printer in existence -- unlike anyone else at the time.

And when they failed by not forseeing the quick move to MSWindows 3.0 and above.

Those were the days. What days? The days when there was still compeition in our industry.

Too ironic

[maximino]

Oh, I love this:

The Word planning team discovered that the WordPerfect sales force was going around to customers and showing Word opening a complex WordPerfect file (printer.tst) to show how bad the conversion was, and therefore how pointless it would be to try to switch to Word. So the Word team organized a special dev team that focused entirely on WordPerfect document import, "reverse-engineering" the WordPerfect file format (documentation for which was jealously guarded, as was the norm back then).

And of course Microsoft now uses open file formats, which mean that OpenOffice can seamlessly open Word files. Microsoft would certainly never try to keep people using its products by suggesting that other products would be unable to open its files. It's features and price that sell product today, boys and girls!

That's it

[Otter]

So, that in a nutshell is the Microsoft method. Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. That puts the competition into reaction mode. And of course it helps if they also make a strategic error because they are under so much pressure.

Or, to put it another way: version 1 sucks, version 2 sucks, they keep pushing on, version 3 isn't bad, 4 is better, 5 is pretty good, 6 is excellent. Of course, at that point they've improved as much as they can, things start getting clunkier and the Linux knockoff has reached the quality of version 4.

But it's a better plan than a) making something good, systematically ruining it and then suing Microsoft or b) making something that sucks, freaking out and making something else that sucks and then suing Microsoft, the two primary approaches of their competition.

Quickly over quality?

[jared_hanson]

After a year of distrusting the company somewhat, I began to gain an appreciation of how Microsoft worked, and to see it for what it was - a machine that was focused on building products that people wanted, as quickly and as well as they could. Note the "quickly" - this was what distinguished MS from Apple in the end - a focus on moving quickly, and beating the competition. Details like great design were not critical to most customers, so that didn't really make it into the products, except where it mattered to the customer.

I haven't read the whole thing, but I wanted to comment on this. His argument makes sense for a certain amount of time, but that time may come to a halt quickly. Microsoft's core business units (Windows and Office) are quickly becoming commodity prices. The efforts of Linux and OpenOffice are, in most respects, equaling the features found in Microsoft products. At the same time, the number any new features added often just bloat the product. When this happens, you have to start competing on quality.

Linux does this as an OS in the server room. However, as a mainstream desktop, Linux lacks in the quality department (ease of use, interface consistency). However, Windows isn't the greatest at these things either and open source should see a huge hole for stealing market share if people get behind efforts to improve the quality (UI, etc.) of the desktop product.

Apple has demonstrated the validity of the quality thinking, unfortunately they seem content to remain a niche market player. I really respect Apple for this, but would love to see Linux take a page from their quality book and read it to the mainstream.

Head Hunter Fodder

[malia8888]

I used to be a corporate head hunter, finding great people from one company and moving them to a competitor's company.

If I were still in that business I would be mining those in company blogs for the best talent. If I were Microsoft I would make those strictly available for internal use only.

True, it would be difficult to romance someone away from the biggest "bestest"; however, many of us have been trapped under an evil middle management boss at one time or another and would be willing to defect.

Re:I call fake blog

[Golias]

What makes this not astroturfing is that the guy comes right out and says he works for Mircrosoft. If he hid that information before rambling about how nifty MS is, then he would be following in the Grand Tradition of his company.

I remember the Windows "switcher" fiasco with fondness. IIRC, what got them busted was using public-domain clip-art photos as the people who supposedly switched. People were like, "hey, wasn't she just telling me to refinance my mortgage in a pop-up add last week?"

So what changed regarding backwards readability?

[sampson7]

So the Word team organized a special dev team that focused entirely on WordPerfect document import, "reverse-engineering" the WordPerfect file format .... but in particular their goal was to have no errors at all on printer.tst. Later the Word sales force used that same file when talking to customers as proof that Word 6.0 could open WordPerfect files flawlessly.

So what changed? Word of today does not open WordPerfect files -- hell, it doesn't even open Microsoft Works files! He seems to understand that this is a huge deal to users, but the modern Word program ignores this basic need.

For instance, I teach a class online. Part of the requirement is that students submit papers throughout the semester. Being an open minded and computer literate kinda guy, my syllabus allowed students to submit papers in any common file format.... Only to find that Word XP garbles anything that's not Word -- even other Microsoft products! Unbelievable. Fortunately, I have access to WP and OfficeStar -- but even then, opening Works files was nigh impossible until I found that one of my old laptops came pre-installed with it.

So I guess I just don't get it -- he understands the issue but ignores the solution. A perfect example of why Word is the choice we live with rather then the choice we desire.

Re:Tech support

[Neil Watson]

That was probably one of the things that lead to WP's financial woes. As the users became less savvy, there were more and more support calls.

Re:That's the problem with blogs...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

So are you saying that the mainstream media is somehow more truthful? I think it's you who is wrong. Historically, it can be easily shown that the mainstream media lies more than individuals. The vast majority of what you read in your newspaper is a lie. Generally, it is propaganda initiated by powerful entities, like goverment or large corporations or the wealthy.

If you want some good examples... consider how the mainstream media, including "reputable" sources like New York Times, were printing story after story about how Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. This wasn't just an opinion; it was supposedly fact. They had strong proof. Did this turn out to be true?

This sort of manipulation is further extended to books as well. A huge chunk of what is claimed as fact in books is biased information. For example, how many people actually know that WWII had nothing to do with stopping genocide or defending the Jews? There was so much anti-Semiticism (by this I'm talking about what the word originally meant; I'm not talking about the modern usage where criticism of Isreal equals to anti-Semiticism). The fact of the matter is Jews were considered inferiors and no one cared at that time.

While on the topic of these "factual" books, how about all the racist and sexist books which were widely accepted and had PROOF that whites were superior to everyone, or how men were superior to women. What happened to these mainstream FACTUAL books from the late 1800's and early 1900's?

It's too bad that you don't realize that mainstream media is mostly recycled government/corporate press releases. Very little of it is the truth... I can see why you would be sceptical of individual commentary (eg. blogs). After all, anyone can say ANYTHING. However, there is an intrinsic mechanism within humans which filters out the lies. Generally, blogs that are more truthful or more insightful will attract more people and have greater reputation. For example, I can claim that 'aliens are about to invade earth' on my blog and no one will believe me. However, if I show pictures or some other data, then people will have a greater chance of believing it. When more and more people link to my site and verify my story, my reputation will increase, and more people will investigate my opinions. In contrast, the mainstream media will never disclose such matters until it is imminent (due to goverment policies).

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Infered tactics

[Intrigued]

The most important aspect of this article is the insight that it shows in how to become the front runner in a software battle.

Key points are:

• Look for major shifts in disruptive technology and be prepared to ride the wave ahead of the opponent
• GUI in this case, WP missed it and couldn't play catchup quick enough
• Don't forsake backward compatibility
• Apple did it with IIe to Mac, WordStar did it in this article. It gives people the opportunity to re-evaluate a leveled playing field when they are already pissed at you.
• If you have to play catchup, don't alienate your users with a crappy, halfbaked compromise
• Backward compatibility doesn't mean backward thinking
• Research and play on the design grievances against the current front runner
• Word was designed against WP defects
• Develop features and function against the mud slinging of the front runner
• takes the sting out of the foundation of the front runner argument
• Cross compatibility
• =backward compatibility - if the road that the fake detour sign points to looks better than the real road, it will be believed.

These are some excellent insights that GPL software designers should keep in mind. Both from the stance of priority in design and what to expect from the competition.